Norm is standing in front of the bathroom mirror, adjusting his Warden Service uniform when his wife Susan stops behind him. “Well, smell you,” she remarks, and moves on into the kitchen. Norm turns and follows her.

What, he asks. What?

Susan places a mug of coffee on the table for him, tells him she’s teasing.

Norm’s thumbs are hooked into the uniform’s leather belt, which is almost entirely hidden by the leather and canvas pouches strapped to it and, if he’s honest about it, by his belly. She has no doubt noted his sidearm already strapped on, even though this is breaking a longstanding agreement in their household. But hell, their daughter moved into the dorms in Orono two years ago now. Not much chance she’ll be heading back to Aroostook County to live. Once kids get on I-95 and head south for school, they tend to continue in that direction. Often right out of Maine.

“And the tie and tie clip today,” Susan continues. Norm waits for the barb, but she just smiles to him. “Nice,” she says. “You look nice.”

Norm blushes a little. They didn’t often exchange these sorts of pleasantries. But he guesses what she’s really thinking, that after the story in the Boston paper about his handiwork, he’d be getting a lot of attention in town and beyond. Maybe even transferred down to Augusta like she always wanted, closer to her aging parents, and farther from this remote and graying upper corner of the state.

The young, female reporter in the brand-new LL Bean gear had “shadowed” Norm and Dennis in the warden’s truck for a whole day a few weeks back. It was exhausting, frankly, trying to shift the truck without touching her thigh, trying to keep Dennis from saying something stupid, trying to figure out how to keep her happy without giving her what she really wanted, which was to go out on an operation to catch a poacher. Norm didn’t want to have to spend a whole night out in the woods with this girl. Nor did he want to have to police Dennis’ eager attentions. Hell, Norm even told her that it could be dangerous. That was a stretch. It had been almost a hundred years since a Maine warden was shot by poachers in the line of duty, and that time it was over beavers, which were worth something back then.

The girl’s story centered on the half-day spent in their shop, with them building a deer decoy. Well not building exactly. As far as production went, it was a waste of a Saturday. Instead, they demonstrated how their deer decoys worked. Animatronics, it was called. Dennis said the word like fifty times, showing off to the girl who was near his age but clearly out of his league. Norm bit his tongue and let Dennis go on about Norm’s early decoy work, from bales of hay and sticks, to plywood silhouettes with reflective eyes to straight-up taxidermy on styrofoam.

The latest versions, a standing buck that raised and lowered its head, blinked its reflective eyes and flipped its tail, and a prone doe that turned its head side-to-side and did the eye and tail thing, they were realistic beyond anything they had created in the past. To his credit, Dennis did allow that the moving parts were Norm’s idea. Norm in turn credited Dennis with the servo motors Dennis got online. These worked way better than the car-window motors Norm had salvaged from the junkyard for the earlier versions and didn’t need the heavy car batteries. With their transmitters, Norm and Dennis could even control the blinking on the reflective eyes. They were magic, these decoys. Really magic. So for now, in the arms race between poachers and the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, the Department had the upper hand.

And now they had better work. A landowner had called the Department to report three dead deer found on his property. Two of them were undersized bucks, the other a doe. By the absence of blood trails, and their location not far from the old lumber road, they looked like they were dropped almost in place from a snow machine and by a large-caliber weapon. Possibly at night, although they’d never be able to prove that. No attempt was made to retrieve the animals, except for one haunch cut away from the doe. It was an awful waste of a resource. And it was a crime.

Norm had immediately suspected French Canadians coming over the border, because no one kills deer like those people do, but he kept this to himself. Dennis (LeFebvre) had family over there in New Brunswick, making him a little sensitive on that account. And heck, Dennis was as angry as he was, the waste of it all, and the extra work it created for them. Somehow the story made it into the police blotter and spread from there. Now the big brass in Augusta are coming down on him and Dennis to solve this thing and solve it soon, using whatever means they have at their disposal. The Boston newspaper article doesn’t help. There were murmurings down in Augusta that the pair’s pride had clouded their common sense, allowing a reporter in like they did. Whoever was doing the poaching was going to be extra wary the next time.

In the office, Norm draws for Dennis a rough path of the snow machines that he suspects the poachers were driving. Sure enough the path does cross into New Brunswick where the Svensons’ hay fields straddle the border. But Dennis argues that there were multiple tracks on both sides, and it was impossible to tell which was which after the last thaw. Norm has to admit that this is true, but come on. Still he bites his tongue on this.

Norm and Dennis haven’t made this iteration of decoys too tempting, as experience has proven that a trophy buck decoy close to the road enticed an embarrassingly large number of normally law-abiding townspeople. Even the judge allowed that he was tempted. It didn’t make Norm especially popular among his neighbors. So this new decoy is a 1-point buck, obviously off-limits, joined by a small doe, also obviously off limits, and it will be set back where only four-wheelers and snow machines would go, on posted state forest land. And it will be night. No excuse for misunderstandings here. The legal department gave them clarification on this. There is no way they would lose in court again over entrapment.

It is going to be a long night, so they clock out. At home, Norm wanders from room to room, so unused he is to being home alone in the middle of the day. He finally settles on the sofa, and after running through the night’s plan one more time, he drops off to sleep. A jangle of keys and the scraping of the sticky front door wake him, and Susan enters, home from the grammar school where she is the nurse. She spots him on the sofa and breaks into a smile. “Sleeping on the job?”

Norm rises, straightens his uniform. He leaves his belt off, as his service pistol is still holstered to it, and has to hook his finger in a belt loop to keep the pants up. He tells her he has to work late that night on an operation, and so tried to get in a few winks. Susan puts her bag down, takes off her coat and gives him a kiss. She tells him they’re never home together at this hour, and, grinning devilishly, leads him into the bedroom. Norm wonders if she is hinting at a life to come down in Augusta, or what it is that has brought on this welcomed affection. But he's not going to ask out loud, that’s for sure.

He barely has time to get dressed and shovel down some dinner before Dennis shows up. While they load the truck with the decoys and equipment, Susan makes a pot of coffee for them to fill their thermoses. She whoops when Norm gives her a bear hug that lifts her off the ground, causing Dennis to remark at the newlyweds. As they drive off, Norm looks back at the house, the windows glowing yellow in the snow, the profile of his wife who for the first time in years had sex with him in the dying light of afternoon. He dreads leaving it all, even if it’s to do what has always been his favorite part of his job.

“You’re not your chatty self,” Dennis says eventually.

“Nope,” Norm replies, leaving it at that. So does Dennis.

It’s a cold one that night, cold and clear. The new layer of snow is powdery and crunches under the tires. They have discussed the pros and cons of driving up to the site, but decide against it because of the tracks they would leave. Instead, they park some ways away and snowshoe in from behind the hill with their gear in their backpacks and the decoys held across their chests. The plan is to work in shifts, one man in the truck for pursuit, and the other bivouacked near the decoys to get a positive ID on the crime. They will switch every couple of hours until two am or so. Dennis isn’t so fond of the waiting and watching, but Norm loves the solitude, the stillness of the winter forest, the dark silhouettes of cloud scudding past the stars.

They set up quickly, then test their radios, check their weapons and take their positions. Norm takes first watch in the woods, and while he knows nothing will happen then, he is content to sit there on his camp stool, his boots on a bed of evergreen boughs to keep them out of the snow, and a steaming coffee in his hand, content to recall in detail the gentle afternoon with Susan.

And that is what he does, shushing Dennis’ radioed wisecracks, listening to the occasional breeze like a broom through the grove of pines. When they change shifts, he climbs into the cab of the truck, stifling hot Dennis has kept it, and reeking of his cigarettes. But the heat feels pretty great and he strips down to luxuriate in it. Norm puts the radio on and listens to the hockey game on the CBC. He gives Dennis more leeway to be chatty on the two-way, as Dennis isn’t allowed to play on his ever-present phone in the field, and the young guy needs some chatting to make the time go by.

And by it goes, as does the next shift, where by the silence Norm suspects Dennis has either fallen asleep or is looking at that porn he watches too much of. No vehicles of any sort go by, and Norm begins to wonder if the article in the Boston paper, followed by all the police blotter stuff in the local one, have spooked the poachers. He wonders if they read these papers over there in Canada. And he wonders what kind of sick person or persons would be killing these deer and just leaving them there for the coyotes.

They change shifts one last time. The truck smells a little bleachy, and Norm doesn’t want to think about what went on in it previously. He shuts off the engine, opens the window and eats a piece of the blueberry cake Susan has packed for him. He turns on the radio, which is set to one of the French stations that Dennis has switched it to. He finds the college station out of Presque Isle. He hates the whiny music, but is entertained by the slacker voice of the student DJ, wonders what his daughter is doing this Friday night down in Orono. Then Dennis comes in on the two-way.

Dennis reports two snow machines, spotlights that scan the hills. Norm starts the truck, tells Dennis to stay on the radio. They have found the decoys, Dennis says next. The reflection from the eyes is perfect, an occasional reassuring blink. And the tail, flipping up white. That should make their trigger fingers itch. Whoever it is, they are taking their time though. He wonders if they’re onto the decoys.

Norm hears the rifle shot echo around the hills. “We’re in,” Dennis shouts into the phone, and Norm hears him crunching through the snow, telling the poachers to halt. There are several more gunshots, and the radio goes dead for a bit.

The forest is a black and ominous blur as Norm drives by, the snow on the fields a dead fluorescent blue, the river a blade of steel. He is bombing down the road, shouting into the radio for Dennis to reply. He should call the police, but what if it’s something stupid, like Dennis falling through the ice at a stream, or stuck in old barbed wire fence. They make too much fun of the Department as it is, the State Police do. Whatever, he will be at the scene soon enough.

A light is sweeping through the pine grove up where they were hiding. That’s positive, and there’s two other fixed lights that he guesses are from the snow machines. So maybe Dennis got the situation under control. Typical of him to try to do this solo. Norm pulls the truck within a hundred yards or so of the scene. He leaves the flashing lights on, which usually tells the poachers that it’s game over, but as he exits the car, a shot rings out and shatters his windshield. Norm dives into the snow. He is coatless, but climbing up into the lit cab would make him an easy target. All he can hear is the truck, the snow machine and his heart. It goes without saying that none of this is going according to plan.

Norm crawls through the snow to the passenger side of the truck and slithers across the seat. He calls the police, gives his position, reports armed suspects, shots fired. He cuts off their questions, reaches up for his Remington 700, and gets it down just before another bullet bursts through the windshield. He turns off the headlights, slips back out the passenger door, and begins the long crawl through the snow in the dark, still without his coat.

He tries to crawl on elbows and knees while holding this rifle in the firing position, like he has seen in movies, but at the rate he progresses it will take most of the night and all of his energy to get there. He catches a broken yelp from Dennis. That’s good, he’s alive. And it gives Norm a burst of energy. The spotlight sweeps the field between Norm’s truck and the grove, but it does it predictably, so Norm rises and high-steps it through the knee-deep snow when the beam passes him, then dives back down when it swings back. He’s getting closer, close enough to hear the snow machines idling, two men arguing, Dennis’ defiant cries. Norm sees silhouettes of two men, one with the light, the other with a rifle, but he doesn’t know who’s who, or where Dennis is.

He sure as hell isn’t just going to start shooting. Short of a songbird he downed with a BB gun at age 9, he has never killed anything bigger than a pickerel, and he certainly doesn’t want to start now. Besides, what if he misses? What if he does get one of them? Could he throw the bolt and re-aim before they shoot him or Dennis?

“Where the fuck is he?” one of the men curses.

“Let’s get out of here,” the other says.

“What about him?” The light focuses on a prone Dennis, whose hands are raised over his head.

Norm gets up and sprints at them. The spotlight swings toward him, and he dives down, his heart stopping when his chest breaks through the thin ice capping a stream. He won’t last long, coatless and wet down there, but for now he’s out of sight, and the spotlight passes straight over him, but stays above him, probably on his tracks.

“Motherfucker,” one of the men yells.

“Let’s go,” the other says.

“Nope,” the first one snorts.

“Where you going?”

Norm hears the man huffing and puffing toward him. He turns on his back, the Remington across his chest. The freezing water stings his back like needles. Steam rises from his chest. Norm tries to count to ten before he must roll over and shoot.

Sirens echo across the valley.

“Fuck!” the approaching man says.

“Let’s go!” the other insists.

A snow machine revs a few times. The light above Norm disappears. The machine approaches, stops, then tears out again. Soon two machines are going full throttle toward Svenson’s fields and the border.

Norm struggles to his feet and stumbles toward Dennis, who is splayed on his back in the snow, which is stained red around his left thigh.

“Motherfuckers,” Dennis groans. Norm needs to bandage it. He hesitates for a second and removes his wet shirt, wraps it around the leg, tightens the knot into a tourniquet with a stick until Dennis screams.

“Gotta stop the bleeding,” Norm says.

“Look at you without a shirt out here,” Dennis groans. “Good thing you’re fat as a goddamned seal.”

Norm lets this go. He turns and watches the two flashing vehicles stop at his truck. He turns his flashlight to them, and gives them three short, three long, three short bursts from it.

A voice comes over the megaphone. “Are you okay?”

“Safe now. But got a man down,” Norm yells back. He turns to Dennis. “Help’s on the way,” he says.

“I can hear just fine,” Dennis replies.

Norm is shivering uncontrollably now. He rubs his arms and belly, but it doesn’t help much. “Can you stand?” He asks Dennis.

“I don’t fucking know,” Dennis says. “But I do know one thing.”

“What’s that,” Norm asks bending and helping Dennis to his feet.

“Those fuckers spoke English. Please take note.”

The troopers arrive just then. One offers Norm his coat, but Norm says his is in the truck. They take Dennis from him and support him between them. Norm scans the ground for Dennis’ stuff, but the troopers tell him leave it, it’s evidence. “What was going down here anyway,” one of them asks.

Norm points his light up the hill at their tableau. Something must have happened to the transmitter during the whole to-do, because the buck is nodding endlessly, and its tail is wagging like a dog’s. The doe’s eyes blink like a strobe. The trooper turns to Norm.

“What the hell,” he says.

Norm turns and heads to the truck. He will get his coat, the weapons and such from it, then he will join the men on the drive to the hospital, then to whatever business comes next. What the hell indeed.